Letting the old domain lapse is silly. Presumably, it would eventually be transfered to an indingenous organization, after its use had been nearly extinguished.
There would be references that outlive a naming transition, of course. But if you read a 10 year old book and expect all the urls to work, that seems highly optimistic. It's uncool to change URLs, but stuff happens.
For XML namespaces, I think it's reasonable to keep the existing ones, but a) when there's a new version, use the new domain name exclusively; b) after some time make provisions for publishing old versions under both domain names. My experience with XML namespaces is that they look like a URL, but there isn't always useful content at that url anyway, it's really just a string that's hopefully unique. It's been a while since I used them, but I seem to recall some useful namespaces being tied to domains that were no longer in use as well.
I've used active standards where the standards body had disbanded and no original sources were available... You had to rely on documents saved and shared. It happens, it's part of life. At least if the ASF changes its name, it will continue to exist.
It's work, perhaps a lot of work, but it's tractable. IBM changed its name to IBM, AT&T changed its name to AT&T, ASF can change its name to ASF. Heck, GMAC changed its name to Ally.
It’d be great if the Apache Nations wanted to control the domain name, but they’re still mostly concerned with basics like clean water and other government services.
There would be references that outlive a naming transition, of course. But if you read a 10 year old book and expect all the urls to work, that seems highly optimistic. It's uncool to change URLs, but stuff happens.
For XML namespaces, I think it's reasonable to keep the existing ones, but a) when there's a new version, use the new domain name exclusively; b) after some time make provisions for publishing old versions under both domain names. My experience with XML namespaces is that they look like a URL, but there isn't always useful content at that url anyway, it's really just a string that's hopefully unique. It's been a while since I used them, but I seem to recall some useful namespaces being tied to domains that were no longer in use as well.
I've used active standards where the standards body had disbanded and no original sources were available... You had to rely on documents saved and shared. It happens, it's part of life. At least if the ASF changes its name, it will continue to exist.
It's work, perhaps a lot of work, but it's tractable. IBM changed its name to IBM, AT&T changed its name to AT&T, ASF can change its name to ASF. Heck, GMAC changed its name to Ally.